I think most of you know by now that I teach surface pattern design and how to jumpstart your creative business online. Students are currently in week 5 of my 8-week signature course: The Pattern Design Academy. I talked about the importance of perseverance last week. This week I want to talk about three tactical ways you can increase your ability to get to the finish line whether you are participating in a course or you are setting up your creative business online. Ready?

Today is my Dad’s 90th birthday. We are celebrating. While we are still busy with the aftermath of my Mum’s passing, it’s critically important to celebrate this amazing milestone birthday and everything that it represents for my Dad and our family. As I mentioned last week, one of the things that helps us move forward is creating new memories. Today’s celebration will create a beautiful new memory and I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.

New beginnings are frequently timed around the first of the year when many of us like to set goals for ourselves. However, finding opportunities for new beginnings throughout the year is a wonderful and refreshing practice. As most of you know, my beautiful and brilliant Mum passed away a week ago. As I continue to honor her, I’ve decided to focus on new beginnings for myself and share five of them with you here.

My beautiful, brilliant Mum passed away on Sunday after a short struggle with cancer. It happened so fast. She was diagnosed on July 4th and died a very short six weeks later. She was a force of nature, always looking for ways to connect people and support their dreams. She brought joy wherever she went. I’m so grateful and so blessed that she was alive to witness my transformation from corporate drone to thriving online artist. She cheered me on, always, no matter what.

One of the very best things about teaching Surface Pattern Design is the students I have the privilege of meeting and mentoring. I’m thrilled to introduce you to Heather Lowery, an accomplished woodblock printer who started to explore Surface Design earlier this year as a way to expand her business.

I’m back to talk about the benefits of exploring surface pattern design. Let’s start from the beginning to make sure everyone understands what surface design actually is. I had never heard of it until about three years ago and didn’t realize it was such a huge creative industry.

Do you get that nagging feeling that you could be doing something creative with your life but you don’t know where to start? I hear this a lot inside my creative community. I’m here to tell you, implore you in fact, to keep reading. I’m sharing my top 3 super practical tips for how to get started.

This year’s 100 Day Project ends tomorrow: Wednesday, July 10, 2019. It’s been an amazing experience leading 50+ women in the challenge this year. I created a private Facebook group for us to ensure we’d have a safe place to post our work, provide encouragement and cheer each other on each day. The breadth and variety of artwork produced has been inspirational.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately when writing this blog. I’m the kind of person who spell checks and proof reads before I’ve even finished my first draft. It would probably be much more efficient for me to jot down my general ideas and write out a first draft. And then do all the massaging, editing and proofing. But I can’t seem to work that way.

Are you feeling frustrated, stuck, or generally lacking in creativity right how? It happens. You may be hard at work inside my 8-week Academy program and need a breakthrough. Or you may still be dreaming about surface pattern design and putting your own beautiful designs on real products but you don’t know where to start. Or maybe you’re just not feeling well due to allergies or June gloom, that Southern California weather pattern with cloudy, overcast skies.

I think I mentioned that I’m leading a 100 Day Challenge right now with a group of 50 creatives in my community. We are on Day 78 of 100 which feels amazing. The reason I’d like to talk about this is because I entered this year’s challenge with the goal of using my iPad Pro, Apple pencil and an app called Procreate every day for 20 minutes for 100 days in a row. What I discovered is that my love of the overall process is what has kept me going when I wanted to quit, switch gears or felt unmotivated or lacking in creative ideas.

Welcome to this week’s blog post. I’m thrilled to introduce you to Kathleen Lambert, one of the students in my Surface Pattern Design Academy program. She completed the course back in March but once you are in the program, you are in my community forever! I can’t wait for you to meet her. She is such a great example of a strong woman who has always put others first and finally decided to invest in herself. Read on to learn all about what she is creating!

Do you struggle with the feeling that you may run out of creative ideas? I’ve just finished the second launch of my signature course, The Pattern Design Academy, and students are diving into the first module of the course this week. Several comments have popped up in our private Facebook group about creativity, originality, and how to stay current, relevant and yet unique in your design work. Let’s talk about it.

I just wrapped up my most recent free LIVE Workshop: How To Get Started in Surface Pattern Design. It was incredible with amazing engagement by the 847 creatives who participated. I taught them how to make their very first successfully repeating pattern in Adobe Illustrator. In 10 days. With many of them using Illustrator for the very first time. It was magnificent. We have been celebrating their WINS together.

I’m incredibly excited to talk to you today about the revolution that’s happening in online education. Online education isn’t new. It’s been around for more than 20 years but it’s absolutely exploding right now. Tony Robbins and his partner Dean Graziosi have just launched a program called The Knowledge Business Blueprint that’s all about the power of learning and implementing quickly through online education. They call it the “roadmap to the next level of life”.

The 100 Day Project started as a workshop led by Michael Beirut, a professor at the Yale School of Art. I learned about this last year and essentially, the exercise is to pick a design task that you can repeat every day for 100 days in a row. The only “rule” is that you do the same action, in some form, every day and keep track so you can present or look back over all 100 versions at the end of the project.

It’s funny but until I learned about Surface Pattern Design a few years ago, I had no idea that this entire industry existed. Maybe you’ve never heard of it either. Once you know about it and dive into making your own designs, your whole perspective shifts. You notice patterns EVERYWHERE you look and I want to make sure you realize the vast opportunities that await you in the industry.